How to Boost Your Team’s Productivity By Process Automation

Introduction

As a company continues to grow and expand, several components interact and are involved in running a business. It may, therefore, be difficult to identify redundant tasks that consume resources and render your business processes less efficient. This gives rise to the necessity for business process automation which, not only eliminates repetitive processes but also leads to the greater overall performance of the business. Process automation results in a greater ROI since it reduces costs and also saves time and resources. To achieve these you could seek the services of a custom software development company in Dallas or your specific locality to implement custom software solutions or rely on existing software if they meet your automation needs.

Why seek a Process automation solution?

Process automation can help streamline your business process. It is achieved through the creation of automated workflows that help perform repetitive business tasks. This is performed first through the creation of process maps to visualize your organization’s workflows, making it much easier for employees to understand operations and to help identify areas in your business that may require automation. In the long run, process automation will save time and money among other resources. It will enable your business to focus only on crucial aspects of day-to-day operations.

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Benefits of process automation

There are several advantages of business process automation. Some of which we highlight below. They include:

• Reducing human efforts will also result in a decrease in human error. Automating some tasks will ensure they are performed with the same degree of accuracy each time. This can also lead to higher rates of customer satisfaction due to better quality of service.
• Visualization of the business process will help reveal insights as to how operations are performed making it much easier to implement changes.
• Process Automation reduces the cost of running a business through the reduction of human resources and effort required in performing certain tasks. This enables employees to focus on important tasks.
• Automation makes it much easier to keep track of the flow of resources. This results in transparency and accountability among the employees.

How to automate your business process and boost your team’s productivity

So, you have the desire to automate your business, but you aren’t sure where to start? Well, here are a series of steps you could follow to determine how to automate your business

1. Map out your business process. This step involves the creation of process maps. Process maps are diagrams that outline activities performed by a business. They can help to easily identify redundant tasks that can potentially be automated. Process maps also carry other benefits for they can be used to identify unnecessary tasks that can be weeded out to streamline your business process.
2. Identify repetition. The essence of automation is to allow repetitive tasks to be executed autonomously without much human effort. Common tasks that are usually repetitive include sending welcome emails and chatting with clients.
3. Making use of project management solutions. There is much software that could help streamline communication and management of information. Project management software such as Jira, Trello, and Teamwork projects among others enable you to automate the process of creation of tasks, assigning them team members, and also monitor the progress of the tasks. Many of them support the delegation of duties to team managers and all the information is organized and accessible to the top management in a simple manner.
4. Gradually replace manual tasks with technological solutions. This could be performed through the use of both software and hardware usually in the form of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). A good example of RPA would be the use of chat-bots to attend to client queries. With the increase in the popularity of AI, chatbots have gotten more accurate and can communicate well within a closed domain. Other examples may include payroll processing, Customer order processing, and email querying.
5. Regularly perform process audits. This is a necessary step as it is common for humans to execute tasks most efficiently, sometimes at the expense of efficiency. Process audits will help identify functions that could be automated and also identify unnecessary inputs and processes.
6. After you have identified processes that could be potentially automated, determine the right tools for the job. Usually, there is a wide variety of options to choose from. For example, when it comes to automating project management or customer relationship management, the list is endless. But it may take a bit more research to identify the tools that might fit within your organization’s budget, efficiently automate the desired task, and also offer greater returns on investment.
7. Educate your team. Process automation is performed not only to simplify tasks but also to free up valuable human resources so that effort could be channeled towards much more crucial activities within the business. An automation solution should be simple enough for your team to keep up with and it should also be simple to maintain.
8. Making use of Customer Relationship Management software. The list of software that can be used to automate your business processes is endless. However, CRMs are some of the must-have solutions for many businesses today. CRMs essentially help in managing your customer info such as transactions, keeping track of customer history, as well as interacting with clients. They are useful tools that help your marketing teams much easily identify potential leads and they generally also help maintain existing clients. Investing in a CRM solution goes a long way in automating the process of management and analysis of customer data while also making it much simpler.

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Conclusion

Business process automation is, therefore, a crucial stage in the growth of any business. It is unavoidable if the business seeks to optimize the usage of time and resources in the process of growth and expansion. You could search for custom software development in Dallas or your specific area, to quickly implement automation solutions to some of your business’s repetitive tasks to boost productivity.